


In Another World

by Yagura



Series: Selkie!verse [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, M/M, NartoCouplesWeek2018, Pining, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 08:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13829889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yagura/pseuds/Yagura
Summary: All his life, Kakashi has been making sure no human would fall in love with him. After all, his father fell in love with his mother, and that didn't work out so well for her. And sure, Kakashi's pelt is very well hidden, but still, you can never be too careful.Enter Iruka. Umino Iruka. Umi no Iruka. Dolphin of the Sea.Surely nobody would give their poor kid a name like that unless they were a magical creature with a slightly twisted sense of humor, right? So Kakashi's just trying to solve the mystery, and then thefeelingshappen. Tohim. Nobody prepared him forthatpossibility.He might not handle it too well.





	In Another World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dahtwitchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dahtwitchi/gifts).



> For Day 4 of NartoCouplesWeek2018, the theme of which was (among other suggestions), In Another World. And also for [dahtwitchi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dahtwitchi/pseuds/dahtwitchi), who enabled me. I'm. I'm so sorry. This just happened. I'm severely sleep-deprived and therefore no one can criticize me.  
> Everyone, go check out the [gorgeous art](https://dahtwitchi-blog.tumblr.com/post/171408772058/fanart-of-fanfiction-link-i-blame-hakuboo-so) dahtwitchi made for this!

_Umino Iruka_. Kakashi likes to roll the name around his mouth. _Umi no Iruka, Dolphin of the Sea_. It sounds like Iruka is a mythical creature, a being of the sea, someone who hears the ocean's call and yearns for it just like Kakashi does. He'd thought, with a name like that, there _has_ to be something. Right?

That's all it initially had been. A mystery to figure out. He only knew one thing for sure: Iruka was no selkie, he'd recognize one of his own, even their cousins the freshwater selkies. But maybe Kelpie? Morgen? Finfolk? Nokken? The _of the Sea_ part implies saltwater, so Undine doesn't seem as likely, nor does Limnad nor Naiad nor Melusine, not Potamide nor Rusalka nor Murigen either, but Nereid or Siren or Bucca all the more for it.

The thing is, all Kakashi would have to do is reach out with his senses, the selkie part of them. Only, he can't. Partially because he keeps himself so tightly leashed he's entirely suppressed them, because if he lets himself feel it the ache for the ocean becomes nearly unbearable. And partially because, well, it would be horribly impolite. Usually Kakashi wouldn't care about that, but you don't mess with magical creatures. You just don't. Even if you are one yourself.

So Kakashi spends a lot of time trying to subtly watch Iruka and interact with him, but is very careful to respect Iruka's private spaces and territories, just in case. Maybe he sometimes puts a particularly pleasing pebble on Iruka's windowsill, pretty smooth stones he may or may not collect with Iruka in mind, but that doesn't mean anything, it's just poor impulse control. He doesn't stake out the school, or Iruka's home, and he only goes to the mission room when he actually has to be there. Sure, he only goes when Iruka is on shift, but always with a reason. And if he sometimes visits the bar Iruka and his friends seem to frequent the most, well, it's a bar. People go to bars. It's a thing they do. Nothing unusual about that at all.

But Kakashi doesn't find anything definitive. After two years, he's no closer to knowing the answer than he was when he started, and that might either be because his surveillance is full of holes (which it is), or Iruka isn't a magical creature at all (irritatingly, just as possible as any other of the more viable options, really).

He does, however, develop an unfortunate crush. Which. Is kind of.

Well. Kakashi doesn't have many memories of his mother, but three things he can recall with perfect clarity, which, considering she left when he was two, is mildly miraculous. The first is the story she'd tell him every night, of the selkie maiden whose pelt got stolen by a human who fell in love with her, who was unable to return to the sea because of it. The second is the only lesson she intentionally imparted on him: _don't let anybody get to your pelt_. The third, perfectly clear memory Kakashi has of his mother are her eyes, a slate grey and always so, so sad. Sometimes she'd stare into the distance with such desolation on her face… Kakashi was two when she left, but even then he'd known which direction she was looking into.

She found her pelt.

Kakashi figured it out when he was four. Figured out what his father had done, what happened to his mother, and that's the day he decided to wear a mask. If he covers his face nobody can see him, and if they can't see him they can't fall in love with him. Perfect logic to a four-years-old kid.

He still finds it perfectly logical, but he has expanded his definition of "mask" somewhat.

The lesson his mother unintentionally imparted on him was: _don't let anybody fall in love with you_. Unfortunately she did not prepare him for the possibility of _him_ falling in love with somebody. Potentially that's because she has never been in love herself, but that way lies devastation, and as much as Kakashi likes to dwell on his mistakes, he will not dwell on the sins of his father.

It's fine. It was all fine, and then he stumbled over that chuunin teacher, and he had the same eyes that his mother had. Not her storm-grey color, already given to coolness just from that – Kakashi ought to know, he inherited them – but of a deep, warm brown. They shouldn't be capable of such anguish.

Except that's a fanciful notion, and they clearly are. Kakashi shouldn't have cared, but he did, and then he recalled the chuunin's name, Umino Iruka, Umi no Iruka, Dolphin of the Sea, and he'd just… he _had_ to know. Had to know if that expression in Iruka's eyes was put there by somebody the same way somebody put it in his mother's.

He'd very quickly figured out that no, probably not, because there actually was a reason for it. An understandable reason, even; for all his experience at having to deal with it, even Kakashi himself doesn't shrug off a teammate's death so easily.

By that point he considered it unlikely that somebody was holding Iruka's pelt captive, but that didn't mean Iruka didn't _have_ a pelt.

And that's where it started. The mystery. Kakashi _had_ to figure it out. Logically, he knows he's not the only one. Logically, he knows that the world is full of magical creatures. His mother collected books and books on them, hid them under a floorboard for Kakashi to find half a dozen years later, and he figured if she kept the book then what was written in it had to be accurate. He met a few magical beings, even, though never one like him. One that lived in human form, among humans. Which doesn't mean they don't exist, it just means they're very good at hiding – which, well, they'd have to be. Kakashi is. His mother was. To this day everybody thinks she was a regular human who died.

When Kakashi dies, it will be as a human. Nobody will ever find out, will never find out his father's most shameful secret, and maybe his father doesn't deserve that, but Kakashi doesn't deserve anything else. His pelt is with Pakkun in the ninken's realm; nobody will ever, ever find it.

Maybe Iruka doesn't have summons to hide his pelt for him, but that doesn't mean he isn't hiding it somewhere else. Or maybe he doesn't have a pelt at all. Maybe he's something else. Kakashi takes to imagining it; his favorite is the idea of Iruka the Siren, who with his dulcet tones lures sailors to their doom. Given Iruka's honestly kind of scary bellowing, him being a siren is either obvious or completely improbable. Either is as likely as the other, which shouldn't even be possible, but there it is. Perfectly possible.

It would be hilarious if Iruka actually were a siren.

Two years, and all Kakashi has to show for it is a pathetic crush. There goes his child prodigy status. The problem with that, he muses, is that eventually the child grows up, and by that point the peers will start to catch up and the prodigy is no more.

Alright. Kakashi is still far above average. But that hasn't kept him from pining after the chuunin teacher, who is actually below average.

That's a bit of a conflict. Personally, Kakashi doesn't care – personally he, in fact, might feel more comfortable with the idea of being a better shinobi than his potential partner. Not that Iruka is that, Kakashi just have a silly crush. But _theoretically_. His father had been a far superior fighter compared to his mother, and that hadn't worked out so well for her.

Sure, sure, intellectually Kakashi knows that that doesn't mean much in the long run. But, well, the whole situation with his mother and father is pretty much his second childhood trauma (her leaving having been the first), and even if he has a list of those as long as his arm, that doesn't mean he can just wave it off and move on.

Which. If Iruka is a magical creature, that means Kakashi wouldn't have to be worried. Not that anything will happen anyway, but theoretically, if it were to, then. As a fellow magical creature, Iruka would surely never try to trap Kakashi.

Not that he could even if he wanted to, because Pakkun has his pelt. Besides, Kakashi likes to think that after two years of subtle observation and some interaction that's less on the shallow side (how is it that they haven't had a single conversation that falls under the definition of "small talk", but around half a dozen that could easily be categorized as "deep and meaningful"? Kakashi is pretty sure that's his fault, he's just _so bad_ at this, if he'd just talk to Iruka like a normal person he'd surely already knows the answers to all his questions), he knows Iruka at least a little. And Iruka doesn't seem remotely like the sort of person who'd trap another person and effectively hold them hostage for any length of time.

Then again, neither did his father, and look how well that assumption worked out for Kakashi.

Still. Kakashi would like to believe that if Iruka were the sort of person who'd do something like that, Kakashi wouldn't have developed feelings for him. Then again, lots of people develop feelings for people who are bad for them.

…this is a disaster. Really, Kakashi should just stop. He should drop the whole Iruka thing – _all_ the Iruka things, actually; especially the thing where he tries to figure out if Iruka is a magical creature, and particularly the thing where he tries to make Iruka smile and be happy.

For a brief moment Kakashi wishes his father had at least managed to teach him how to handle having feelings for somebody, but then he remembers how his father handled that and, yeah, no. Better not.

This is ridiculous and it should stop. Except it's so funny watching Iruka yell at shinobi who are much stronger than him, and pin little brats to the ceiling, and it's pure comedy gold watching people clear out of his way if Iruka employs a particular kind of glare. He's pretty certain Iruka does it on purpose and Kakashi _lives_ for watching that unfold, he really does.

And then Iruka _yells at him_. The serious type of yelling that's not funny at all. _In front of everybody_.

Kakashi shuts him down hard. He'd like to say he doesn't mean to, but he does – it's disappointing and mildly infuriating, being disrespected like that. And it's not something Kakashi can let stand, not of it happens in public. As persistently as he sticks to his masks, he cannot allow for people to actually consider them all there is to him. He cannot afford for people to think he actually is nothing but a persistently late, lazy slacker.

Iruka shouldn't have made that mistake, and that's disappointing. Moreover, it makes Kakashi wonder if he himself is making a mistake. He has his reasons and they're logical, but that doesn't mean there is no margin for error.

Kakashi may or may not spend all night thinking about it. He can't afford to miss the sleep, but he still does. And.

It's possibly more than a crush. If it were just a crush, the discord between them would have killed it, right? But it hasn't. Kakashi thought because it wasn't impairing his judgment it couldn't be anything stronger than a crush, but perhaps he was wrong.

Which. That's really the most unfortunate realization to have, in the wake of what just happened. Even if Iruka had been inclined to give Kakashi the time of day before, he surely won't be now. Not that Kakashi had any intentions to do anything about his feelings, anyway, but still. At least it had been an _option_ , before. Even if only a theoretical one.

Now it seems like it rather isn't.

The worst part is, it turns out that Iruka was right. After their C-rank turned A-rank, Kakashi figured that, since his team was made up of stubborn fools who only know the meaning of teamwork if their lives are literally in danger, he only need provide some endangerment to them and they'll get their act together. Oh, they'd certainly fail the exams, but at least they'd come out of them as a team and Kakashi would finally be able to get somewhere with them.

Only instead they shatter under the pressure. They completely fall apart.

And somehow, in the aftermath of that, Iruka finds him. Kakashi is sitting on a bench – yes, that bench, the irony doesn't escape him – and Iruka finds him and sits down next to him. For a while, they sit in silence.

Kakashi's waiting for the condemnation, but it doesn't come. Instead…

"I was wrong."

Kakashi blinks, thinks for a second that his mouth moved on its own, because he was thinking it and he meant to say it, except it's _Iruka_ who said it. "…what?"

"I was wrong," Iruka repeats, turns his head to pin Kakashi with that determined look in his eyes. That expression means that Iruka intends to get his way, and he _will_ or so help you god. Kakashi loves that expression and it might be the reason for his frequently insufficient mission reports. "I figured it out weeks ago and I should have told you then, but I didn't. I'm sorry."

"…I'm not sure I follow," Kakashi is forced to admit.

"Why you signed Naruto's team up. You did it so they'd realize their limits, right? So that they'd understand that they _aren't_ ready, not by far, that there is a lot they have to learn still. You signed them up because you knew they'd fail, and you intended for that to teach them something. I figured it out weeks ago, and I should've told you, but I was mad because of how you shut me down, so I didn't. You didn't deserve that, and I'm sorry."

Stunned, all Kakashi can do for a moment is blink. That… he did not expect. Wouldn’t have expected in a million years, to be honest. Not because he didn't think Iruka capable, he's clearly intelligent, above average. But… he just didn't figure Iruka would be _interested_ in figuring it out. He thought Iruka would write him off, after their little confrontation, and he wouldn't even have blamed him.

Iruka meets his eyes, not very apologetic but no less sincere for it, and still so determined. When Kakashi fails to say anything, he continues, "The thing is, once I figured it out, I agreed with you. I think it would have worked. Sasuke and Sakura aren't used to failure; it really would have woken them up to reality. Naruto, not so much, but Naruto is amazingly persistent and he would have followed suit. If Orochimaru and Itachi hadn't interfered, I'm certain it would have worked. Maybe it even would've worked despite Orochimaru's seal, if only Itachi hadn't gotten involved." There's regret in Iruka's eyes now, a bitter twist to his mouth. "I don't think anybody could have done anything to stop Sasuke after Itachi got involved."

"I failed them," Kakashi blurts. "They weren't ready and I knew it, but I still signed them up, and it _broke_ them."

"Maybe," Iruka grants. "Maybe it broke them. Except Sasuke was already broken, far more so than anybody thought, and we all failed him. You no more so than the rest of us – no more so than me. In fact, I had years with Sasuke where you only had months, so if anything, you are less to blame for missing it than I am. That's something I'll have to live with. That's something we'll both have to live with, I guess. But you didn't make a mistake. You weren't wrong. Things happened that were way beyond your control, and that's where everything went wrong. But it's not your fault." 

This, Kakashi has to be very, very careful about. It's something he very much wants to hear, but that doesn't mean it's true. So he very methodically, slowly examines Iruka's reasoning.

It does make sense. Intellectually, Kakashi has to conclude that Iruka might even be right. Emotionally, however… "Maybe that's true. But still. If I hadn't signed them up, none of this would have happened."

"You can't know that," Iruka protests. "Orochimaru targeted Sasuke on purpose. Something as insignificant as Sasuke being somewhere else in the village rather than the Forest wouldn't have stopped him. And nothing would have stopped Itachi, either. To either of them it was likely completely irrelevant if Sasuke happened to be participating in the chuunin exams or not. It didn't matter to them, and since they're the lynchpins, it wouldn't have made a difference if they hadn't been in the exams."

That… is inarguably true. A very logical conclusion. Kakashi can't find fault with it, and he does look, because he still feels like if he had done something different, none of this would have happened. The invasion, certainly, and the Sandaime's death, but Sasuke would still be in the village.

But the validity of Iruka's reasoning can't be denied. "…maybe," he eventually grants, quietly.

Iruka hums wordlessly, and then he shifts a little until his shoulder is brushing against Kakashi's. Just a little, it's a question more than anything; Kakashi could pull away and nothing would have happened. But instead, Kakashi finds himself leaning into the contact, just a little. And then a little more. The warmth of Iruka's body seeps through the fabrics of their shirts, and surely this is allowed. Surely there's nothing wrong with closing his eyes and just allowing himself to feel for a while. To just feel Iruka's warmth. Iruka, warm and alive next to him, Iruka, who came to find Kakashi and talk him through his crisis just like Kakashi has done for him more than once.

They sit in silence for over an hour. The sky darkens, turns orange, red, purple, blue. With the darkness, the temperature drops, but the cold has never bothered Kakashi as much as it does the humans, and Iruka is warm, warm, warm next to him. So he doesn't realize just how cold it's gotten until a shiver runs through Iruka.

"Oh," Kakashi makes. "I. I guess we should. Uhm."

"You can walk me home," Iruka says, and the words sound like an offer, but there's a teasing glint in Iruka's eyes that would make anybody familiar with Iruka wary. "And then you can give me another stone like I'm pretty sure you've been dying to, since I haven't gotten any in _weeks_. And then you can ask me out. Ramen, at Ichiraku's, next Friday."

Wide-eyed, Kakashi blinks at Iruka. Who looks back, cheeks red, but he doesn't avoid Kakashi's eyes. Even when insecurity flickers alive in them he doesn't look away. "Unless, uhm, you don't want to. I just figured, with the stones… I _know_ that was you. And I was willing to wait, only now… now I'd rather not waste any more time."

"How?" Kakashi manages to ask.

Now Iruka looks away, ducks his head, face even redder now. "Ah. I, uhm, I asked Anko. One of her snakes could smell you on the stone."

"And what did you think?" Immediately after asking it, Kakashi bites his lower lip. Way to sound insecure there. But, well, he wants to know, and the answer is pretty important, since a fellow magical being of the sea probably would recognize the courtship behavior. But humans don't do it like that, certainly don't attach any romantic meanings to stones. Rather, they use flowers, like flowers don't die a week later, what sort of message is _that_?

"Ah, well… I thought it was cute? A little puzzling, at first, because I wasn't sure _why_ , or why stones, but, well. You're a bit odd, Kakashi. And pretty shy, I figure, or you would've actually asked me out by this point. Unless I've read this entirely wrong and you never meant to do that, will you please just say yes or no already?"

"Yes," Kakashi blurts. And, now that it's out, he might as well go for broke, so he digs into his pocket and pulls out the small, oval-shaped stone he picked from the riverbed a while ago with Iruka in mind. After their confrontation he figured Iruka would definitely not want any gift from him, even if he didn't know it was from Kakashi, so he'd just kept it in his pocket. He might or might not have stared at it forlornly once or twice.

But, well. Now he has his answer. He has a lot of answers, now. Iruka isn't a magical creature – not one of the sea, anyway, but a non-water-based magical creature probably wouldn't give their child a name that implies water relation – and Iruka wants Kakashi to take him on a date.

Right. Kakashi… can do that. He's read about that, so he's pretty sure he knows the protocol, anyway.

He offers Iruka the pebble and asks, as smoothly as he's capable which admittedly isn't very much so, "Will you go to Ichiraku's with me for dinner this Friday? As a date."

Iruka's cheeks are still fetchingly red, and his smile is very sweet when he accepts the stone. "I'd love to," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~i'm so sorry sakumo~~
> 
>  
> 
> don't forget to look at [the art](https://dahtwitchi-blog.tumblr.com/post/171408772058/fanart-of-fanfiction-link-i-blame-hakuboo-so)! :)


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